Saturday morning arrived the way most Saturday mornings do. With me setting an alarm. It's not like I'm ever able to actually sleep in on Saturdays anyway. I end up waking up around 7:30 regardless. This time the alarm was set so that I could be up and ready for Collective Con.

Collective Con is the local con here in town and it's relatively small as cons go. R&B came by around 9 and we headed out to breakfast and then the con. First off, the parking situation was a bit of a mess. We got waived into the portion of the lot reserved for the vendors and artists. Which was fine no big deal really, just entertaining. Then we had to stand in this incredibly long line that led directly out into the parking lot and towards the main road. Why they didn't try and wrap it around the building I have no idea. We're standing in this crazy long line and R&B went to go and get their tickets since they did not purchase ahead of time. I ended up leaving the line because I already had a ticket on my phone. B ended up getting in free because there was a nice family who had an extra wristband. Unfortunately for me no one told me that the "will call" tickets were the same as the ticket on the phone so I had to get BACK into the long ass line. All of this was done in the parking lot with cars trying to park around us.

Already unimpressed but surprisingly not annoyed, I finally got to the door where they tried to tell me it was one bottle of water per person. Dude… But the guy let me slide because I was with two other people. For those of you who have been to the larger cons before, think about that. They did a bag check on EVERYONE with any type of bag. They wanted to limit the amount of water you could bring in with you. I figure that tells you everything you need to know.

The layout once I finally got inside was interesting as well. The main vendor booths were right up front with the food around the sides. The signing area was right in the middle of the vendors, the artists in another room, and the panels outside and around the corner. Merchandise-wise, there weren't many options available. There were the typical ones, the glass guys, the wooden clock guys, anime everywhere. There didn't seem to be many specialty artisans. I suppose I can understand that, it's a lot of work to get ready for a show in general and I'm not sure why any of the bigger artists and vendors would waste their time on the smaller shows. I was disappointed that there was really only one t-shirt table and it was all anime and gaming stuff.

There was a TARDIS and a Stranger Things wall (the one with the alphabet and holiday lights) for folks to take pictures with. There was a ton of food, but we didn't buy any. B was the only one who found anything he wanted there.

I mostly wanted to go to scope out the set up and who else may be there. I was thinking that next year we'll get a little booth for Ctrl+C. We'll see. I certainly didn't see any other podcasts there.

We didn't stay terribly long, two hours at most. But it was a nice to get back into the con experience for a little bit. MegaCon is coming up and I'm totally excited about that.